Tag: weather

Good Health Can Be Icky

Once again, it is not even summer yet and I am already whining about the weather. Last year, we had a rather mild summer season and a refreshingly chilly winter. I was fairly sure that felicitous set of circumstances was not going to last. It has not.

This summer promises to be icky, sticky, ugly, and muggly. Meteorologists warn us that the season will be even hotter than it is most years. Living in central Florida will be more uncomfortable than living in Satan’s sinus cavities. The Farmers’ Almanac predicts a hurricane season that will huff and puff and blow our houses down. It all promises to be depressive and oppressive this year.

Typically, Florida boasts about 149 months a year of summer, give or take 3.7 months. When I first investigated Florida weather when planning a trip to Disney World, I read that “hurricane season” was considered from June through September. When I actually moved to Florida, I learned that I had been misinformed. Summer runs from May 1st through November 15th. Hurricane season is June 1st through October 31st. This may seem like an exaggeration, but this alarming duration is quite possible in Florida.

I get Seasonal Affective Disorder in the summer, the way some people get depressed in the winter when they do not see the sun for months at a time. For me, it is the sheer weight of the air fraught with humidity, the temperatures consistent with the idea that the world has a fever, the thunderstorms that suggest World War I is still raging, and the complete inability to plan or rely on trips out of the house because of rain. It is not uncommon to have to postpone fun trips to even indoor locations because the rain decreases driving visibility to about the distance from the tip of my nose to the point of my chin. Driving in Florida thunderstorms is a little like playing Blind Man’s Bluff going fifty miles an hour. Not the smartest idea.

The worst thing for me, though, is the sweat. I live with a perpetual layer of sticky all over my body from May to November. They say horses sweat, gentlemen perspire, and ladies glow. This lady does not glow. Glowing does not involve hair matted down with an overapplication of the natural hair gel known as perspiration. Glowing does not involve the inability to cross the room without stopping for a hydration break. Glowing does not involve multiple applications of deodorant a day. The last I heard, people who glow are not testy, cranky, and exhausted. Given the content of that last sentence, I am sure you agree that I am certainly not glowing. What I am is testy, cranky, and exhausted.

My sweet friend Kathleen has a different take on the muggy, sticky perspiration. I must agree that Kathleen does glow. It might be an evolutionary accommodation. She grew up in Florida. She tells me that sweating is good for me. The sweating process removes toxins from the body and is a key to good health. It is like exfoliating on the inside. I am willing to take her word for it. I do not need an annual demonstration. Especially when that demonstration apparently does not take my mood into consideration. Sweating might be terrific for my body, but it clearly does nothing good for my mental health. And for the record, I never heard anyone make a New Year’s resolution to sweat more.

Maybe my summer weather rant is out of my system. Considering we have about another 148 months of summer, I doubt it. Yes, I know I am being over-dramatic. I know I will not really burst into flames or drowned in my own secretions. I am going to try not to complain any more. Instead, I praise and thank God for air conditioning.

Heavy, all-consuming, suffocated, lethargic, exhausted sigh……

Please send popsicles!

What is the weather like where you are? Do you look forward to sunny skies and days by the beach or do you count the days until you will next feel a cool breeze?  Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a cool day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Living In Satan’s Sinus Cavity

I believe I have shown remarkable restraint. It is nearly the end of July and I have not posted my annual summer weather whine. Since I live in a place where summer begins in May and does not conclude until November, I think I deserve some credit for avoiding a meltdown before now.

Time’s up, though.

I reside in Florida, which is pretty much like saying I live in Satan’s sinus cavity during the summer months. It is hot, moist, sticky, and slimy virtually all the time. The air is heavy with humidity. It is so thick with unshed rain and mosquitos; breathing is hazardous to one’s health. Of course, not breathing is even more hazardous, so we soldier on with the aid of life support- air conditioning. I know some people who do not  leave their artificially cooled compartments for months.

Thunder does not rumble; it crashes and pummels. Rain does not pool in my yard; it oceans. So far this summer, we  have been pretty lucky in that we have not yet had multiple consecutive days of catastrophic rainstorms. Often,  we will have thirty rainy days in a row… or more. One summer, I counted sixty-two consecutive rainy days. Even Noah and all those animals only had to cope with forty. People will say, “yes, it does rain every day, but it is only for half an hour in the early evening.” These people are purposely misleading you. To be fair, it does rain for only a brief time on some days. Most days, the rain is much more significant. Some days, I feel like I should not leave the house without a hairdryer… for my clothes and shoes. I will never forget the year I acquired smurf feet because I walked from the car to the grocery store in blue shoes.

Summer is also growing season, which sounds very nice and idyllic. However, growing season in my household simply means weed season. Any plant I try to grow intentionally tends to die in the summer, even if I have kept it alive for months, because the heat is so intense that the leaves incinerate spontaneously. The weeds, however, seem to have no such delicacy. Max and I pull weeds and trim the bushes early every Saturday morning. In the winter, this task means putting on a sweatshirt and leggings. It means about 10 to 15 minutes of easy work. There is little need to bend over or squat because almost all the weeds have succumbed to my weekly Round-up application. In the summer, it is already about a million degrees when we start work at 7:30. The force of the heat and humidity compresses my skeleton into my internal organs as soon as I walk out of the door. Even though I am faithfully applying the Round-up, the summer weeds propagate at such an alarming rate that our task takes easily twice as long than in the winter. I can barely stand outside for five minutes, much less bend to pick weeds, without dissolving into a puddle of gooey, humidity-seasoned sweat.

Satan’s sinus cavity feels infected in the summer. There is something like decay that fills the air. And, speaking of sinus cavities, mine does not do so well in the summer, either. Something about the air pressure or about the humidity or the weeds that grow with wild abandon triggers seasonal allergies I never knew I had until I moved to Florida. I have a near constant headache and raw respiratory system. I test myself for COVID way more than should be necessary, but I want to be sure I am not contributing to a worldwide pandemic. Every time I test, it turns out it is just my sinuses raging against the summer machine.

And, this year, I found a fresh new annoyance in the summer repertoire. Does anyone else get more achy during times of heat and humidity? I thought arthritis was supposed to get worse when it is cold. I am nearly 63 years old. My body is aware of this number. I have my fair share of tenderness and pain in my joints, ligaments, muscles, and menisci during the Days of Wine and Roses (November through April). This year, May welcomed in a whole new level of body aches. The discomfort has increased with the passing (way too slowly) days of summer. It feels like all of the bones around my joints are bound within a ring of calcified bone material that is gradually tightening. I do not want to overstate because I know many people suffer much more than I do from arthritis and other age-related health problems. I am, blessedly, pretty healthy. My point is simply that I did notice a significant uptick in my body’s resistance to age this summer.

When I researched this phenomenon online, I learned that there are studies that suggest that barometric pressure, humidity, and various other summer weather phenomenon do have a negative impact on arthritis. Other studies proclaim that there is no impact at all. These studies suggest that the summer, in and of itself, has no impact. The problem is that the uncomfortable conditions make the patient cranky, thereby reducing their tolerance to pain.

I will not argue with that. Cranky sounds about right.

So what’s the weather like where you are? What season do you find most difficult to endure and why? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have an unsticky day!

Terri/Dorry 🙂

Warning: Mandatory Annual Summer Weather Whine Ahead

It is that time of year again… time for me to vent about how uncomfortable and inconvenient the weather in Florida can be during the summer.  Summer happens from May through all of October here, so I think I am entitled to rage against the rain.  Last year, we had a relatively mild summer.  I made it to September before I published my mandatory annual summer weather whine.  I fear that will not be the case in 2021. 

You know how people use all those lovely poetic similes to describe weather… a blanket of snow, a blanket of fog, a veil of mist, etc.?  In Florida, we have a blanket of mug.  For almost half the year, our air is too heavy to breathe.  When I was a child in Southern California, there were sometimes smog alerts.  We were encouraged to stay inside and to avoid breathing.  Smog was nothing compared to the liquid-laden air we are expected to inhale in central Florida. 

When I began writing this piece, on June 13, the summer mug descended upon us.  I realize that the calendar says it is not yet summer, but someone forgot to tell Mother Nature.  When I went into church that morning, it looked like a beautiful spring day.  Some time during the service, a noise began to rise through the rafters of the church.  At first, I thought it might be our air conditioner, which always starts with an overture.  Soon, however, I realized it was the sound of driving rain whooshing through the atmosphere and pelting the roof of the church.  God confirmed this understanding by sending several huge cracks of thunder bellowing through my cognizance.  Then, lightning flashed through our stained-glass windows.  It was a “thunderwower.”

It is now June 17th, and the rain has not stopped for more than a few hours since.  The respite provided by those “few hours” is not all that relieving because the cooler air that typically appears when the rain cracks the humidity barrier is very short-lived.  It is a constant unpleasant cycle of heightened heat and humidity, interrupted briefly by a thunderwower when the cloudburst cools things off and lances the boil of the water-heavy air, only to find the atmosphere building sog once again when the shower has passed. The weather teases in this way, making us believe that there is going to be a break but the discomfort marches on.  The worst part is that it is already difficult to see the light at the end of the lightning.  It feels like the summer weather will NEVER stop.  I look at pictures of myself at Disney World last December wearing a jacket, jeans, and UGGs.  I cannot quite believe that time will ever come again.

It is not simply the discomfort of the weather that is the problem.  I am one of those people who genuinely enjoys planning the simplest of activities and looking forward to them.  I am not really a spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment kind of gal.  I delight in scheduling fun activities weeks ahead of time. I get excited as the appointed day gets closer.  In the summer, planning and scheduling any activity is a fool’s errand.  Obviously, outdoor activities are weather-dependent.  Even indoor activities are iffy because it is common for the storms to be so bad that one cannot see the road in front of them when driving.   I cannot even schedule a series of back-up plans because the weather is so contrary and unpredictable.  We never know what the skies will bring even a day ahead of time.  Plans are wishes and schedules are fantasies.  This makes me fidgety. 

I am afraid that I am not the most pleasant of companions from June to October.  You know how some people have that Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and need light treatment to replicate sun exposure?  I have something like that.  It is not so much lack of sun.  After all, Florida is the “Sunshine State.”  Why it is the “Sunshine State,” I am not sure, considering how much it rains.  Still, there is plenty of sunshine… just like there is plenty of sunshine on Venus.  It is more that the rain, humidity, and inability to look forward to fun activities feels oppressive to me.  My mood feels as heavy as the air.  I try to be self-aware.  I try to force myself to be engaged and pleasant.  Sometimes, I succeed.   

Last summer, I think I was more tolerant of the wicked weather partly because the summer was milder but also because we were in the midst of COVID-19 lockdown.  I could not go out and do things, anyway.  It seemed churlish and insensitive to complain about my life being limited by weather when there was a much more serious limitation stalking all of us.  This year, I am even less tolerant than usual.  It feels like the world is finally opening and the weather is pushing the door shut again. 

I know I am being petulant and whiny. I know that I made the choice to live in Florida.  I know that I like living here for the most part.  I know I am raging about something that would be no big deal to just about anybody who does not live in Florida.  Frankly, it would not be a big deal to most people who DO live in Florida.  I do not care.  This is my blog, and I will cry if I want to!

What do you like or dislike most about where you live?  Please share your perspective by leaving a comment.  In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com. 

Have a whine-free day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Ok; It Is Freakin’ Hot

Maybe I am finally becoming a Floridian.  This is the sixth summer I have spent in Florida and I have managed to squelch my annual whine about the weather until the beginning of September.  I am sure the new air conditioner I installed a couple of years ago has not hurt my climate adaptability, either.

Whether my increased tolerance of Florida’s summer weather stems from my disposition slowly morphing into “Floridian” or from a better air conditioning system, I am proud that I have held out until now.  June, July, August… you have not heard me bitching about the heat, humidity, thunderstorms, or general sogginess of the climate.  Still, I now have to say I have reached the end of my tolerance.  

It’s freakin’ hot. 

The news says the temperatures this summer have been well above normal.  In fact, for most of the summer, the mercury has been breaking records.  Because of the COVID-19 restrictions and closures, it did not make much difference since I was mostly inside, enjoying the air conditioning and the highest electric bill I have ever received.  I always said that I figured the COVID-19 quarantines would lift just about the same time as our summer weather comfort quarantine would hit.  I was right.  In the summer, the weather is often too hot, too rainy, too humid, and too unstable to make plans.  It is not that the weather ALWAYS keeps people from doing things, but it COULD keep people from doing things at any time.  You can sometimes get lucky and spontaneously enjoy some outdoor activity, but you can never rely on a plan to do something because the weather will likely make other plans.  For someone like myself, who is not that spontaneous, it is frustrating.  This year, the whole outside world is frustrating and unstable, so maybe the weather is not infuriating me as much. 

Recently, though, I have started to wilt noticeably.  Part of my challenge is that I have started going out to do things that I have missed since COVID-19 shut down the world.  To add to the weather challenges, these activities require me to wear face coverings.  Central Florida in the summer always makes me feel like I am breathing water.  With a mask covering my breathing apparatus while wandering around a Disney park on a “feels like” 106-degree day, it is like I am breathing an old, wet, soggy, wash rag.  Funny, my lungs seem to prefer air.  At least, as I recall.  It has been awhile since my lungs sucked down some unhumidified air. 

I am sure many of you are yelling at your computer screen and calling me all sorts of names because, really, what do I expect, wandering around a theme park in the middle of the summer?  I would normally never go to Disney in the heat of the summer.  There is no way I would pay regular admission to get the truncated Disney experience right now.  With the annual pass, though, it does not cost me anything, and I really, really wanted to experience what “Disney without crowds” feels like.  I have been able to get on all the rides that were unavailable prior to COVID-19 due to massive attendance.  I also find it fascinating to examine the creative strategies Disney employees to manage social distancing and other safety protocols. 

But I digress.  This blog is not about Disney World.  It is about my ability, or lack thereof, to weather the weather. 

As I said, I’ve been a pretty good sport about the weather this year. I have maintained a sunny disposition and avoided weather-induced crankiness, for the most part. The last week or two have been my Waterloo, however.  It was like, suddenly, the immensity and oppression of the “heamidity” whacked the constitution clear out of me.  I have valiantly wrestled with the weather for the past three months and now, the weather has me pinned.  Somebody slap the mat, please!  Put me out of my misery. 

We are slowly slugging our way through the humidity to autumn, at least by the calendar’s reckoning.  I have been in Florida long enough to know that the climate usually does a pretty sucky job reading the calendar, but a girl can hope.  I am three weeks away from a sudden trip and Fall.  At least, I hope I am.

In reality, September is often the worst month because there is little if any relief from the heat and humidity.  Every hurricane that has been a realistic threat for our part of the state since we have lived here has occurred in September, which makes me a little hesitant to proclaim September 21 the end of the Florida summer boil. 

At some point, I look forward to not sweating while actually in the shower.  I look forward to days when my air conditioner will run a sprint, rather than a marathon. I look forward to being able to walk out my front door without my glasses fogging up. I look forward to not feeling sticky icky every hour of the day. 

Right now, all these goals seem like impossible dreams.  There is some hope that autumn will come, and the weather will eventually change.  Starbuck’s has started selling pumpkin scones. 

It is too hot and I am too lethargic to think of a question this week, but feel free to use the comments as a space to vent your own personal weather whine!

Have an air-conditioned day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

It’s Twizzling

It has rained 47 of the last 52 days.  People have been sounding the alarm about possible drought for the past year.  I think we are past the danger.  All I know is that, if anyone starts yammering about “drought” right now, they will be drowned by the rain falling into their open mouths.

Before I run down to the shipyard to get the ark out of dry dock, let me put this soggy statistic in perspective.  Yes, the rain seems relentless, but it isn’t quite so dramatic as it might sound.  “Rain” can be anything from twenty minutes of the sky sweating around twilight to overpowering thunderstorms of Armageddon proportions.  It can be hours of pounding, blinding swirling walls of water that make you feel like you have been caught in a clothes washer. On the other hand, it can be a light, refreshing shower that is a blessed relief from the oppressive, humid heat that has boiled the day away.

It is hard to plan anything around the weather in the summer in Florida.  Clearly, people cannot stop their daily activities because the forecast calls for the ubiquitous “rain.”  Since the prediction calls for at least a 60% chance of rain almost every day and history shows that it actually does rain on far more than 60% of days, we would all have to zip-lock ourselves into our self-contained, air-conditioned houses if we are determined to avoid “rain.”  We have to be a little more creative if we want to strike a balance between hermetically sealed and waterlogged.

For one thing, savvy Floridians don’t just check the day-to-day forecast when making plans.  Our weather reporters give updates on the exact time they expect rain to hit specific city neighborhoods.  They are amazingly accurate.  We are also pretty sophisticated weather.com users.  It is commonplace to see people at Disney World huddled under canopies during rainstorms, feverishly working their phones to track the precipitation minute-by-minute to determine when they should make a dash for the Space Mountain line.

The real problem is beyond the timing issue.  It is that the word “rain” is just so ambiguous. They say the peoples of the frozen north have dozens or even hundreds of words for snow.  People who live in central Florida should have at least that many words  for rain. It would make it so much easier to plan my activities if I knew just how intrusive the day’s particular rain is expected to be. I’d like to propose a few new vocabulary words to help clarify the peskiness level of rain.

Twizzling– This is the soft, warm rain that falls like the sun nearly every night around twilight.  If you are inside, you might not even realize it is raining.  If you are outside, it takes a minute to realize that the moisture you feel is actually droplets of precipitation, as opposed to the sweat that has been gathering on your skin all freakin’ day.  Twizzling is good.  No significant peskiness quotient at all, unless you just washed your car.  And if you did just wash your car, what were you thinking?

Soggifying– This rain is prolonged and intermittent.  It isn’t hard enough to impair visibility.  It doesn’t involve ferocious wind or chilly drenching. Still, if you go out in the soggify, you are going to be uncomfortable unless you can hide under an umbrella. You usually can’t wait it out because it may go on for hours.  It is sneaky, too. It may seem like it is over, but will start up again twenty minutes after clearing.  Super high peskiness factor.   There is just no getting around it.  Soggifying will pretty much put a crimp in any plans that don’t involve just staying home.

Tantraining­– The skies darken menacingly and thunder booms alarmingly.  It seems to come from nothing and looks a lot scarier than it is.  There may be a few flashes of lightning, culminating in a short, feverish burst of angry rain.  The whole thing reminds me of a toddler throwing a hissy fit…loud, explosive, and over as suddenly as it began.  Tantraining is pesky while it is happening, but is usually over within 30 minutes.

Stealthsoaking- This is the “Camelot” version of rain… it never falls till after sundown and by eight am the morning dew must disappear.  Many nights, the skies open gently and a slow, steady rain waters the earth while most of us are sleeping. It is the sort of rain that would cause Lerner and Loewe to suggest that there is simply not a more congenial spot for happilyeveraftering than central Florida. Stealthsoaking is a pretty darn convenient kind of rain with a low peskiness quotient… unless you work the swing shift or engage in midnight gardening activities.

Thunderwowers– These are the terrible, wrathful thunderstorms that make the earth slosh.  They feel as though they are never going to stop.  The sound of the thunder makes you think that you have happened into a time warp and World War I is still under way except that they didn’t fight World War I underwater.  The rain is so thick and choppy, driving becomes more of an adventure than it should be.  You can’t see what is in front of you, but can’t pull off to the side of the road to wait for a break in the storm because you can’t see what is on the side of you either.

I think that adding these words to our weather language would help meteorologists be a lot more specific in reporting the rain forecast.  I’d like to champion their inclusion, but I’m not sure where to go to propose them.  Apparently, everyone complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it!

What is the wackiest weather you have ever experienced?  Please share your perspective by leaving a comment.  In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Stay dry!

Terri 🙂

 

 

News Flash- We Interrupt our Regular Programming to Report….

Fall finally fell.

 It took its own sweet time about doing so, I have to say.  It was such a momentous occasion, I took note of the date.  Fall fell on December 9th. Until then, Fall had not so much as stumbled.  Temperatures still hovered around the 90-degree mark.  The air was still humid enough to drink.

I was starting to take it as a personal affront.  Around the time the calendar said that Fall was beginning, Max bought me a beautiful autumnal sweatshirt.  It was a gorgeous shade of rust, richly embroidered with multi-colored leaves.  When I was looking at it in the store, I sighed sadly and said, “I love this, but it is much too hot to even think about putting it on.  If I wore this, it would literally become a SWEATshirt inside of ten seconds.  It will never be cool enough to wear it.”  Max replied, “Someday it will be” and purchased the garment for me.

Since that time, lo those many weeks ago, it has hung in my closet, silently chiding me for wasting his money.  When I look for something to wear in the mornings, my eyes immediately light on its beautiful color, but, almost as immediately, I remember that it is once again a hot, humid summer day IN NOVEMBER. I have really, really wanted to wear that shirt, but the season just wouldn’t cooperate.   I wanted to stick my leg out and trip Fall.

On December 9th, however, Fall not only fell, but tumbled down so hard and fast, I’m surprised it did not break a hip.  I got up to go to water aerobics class and got halfway there before I remembered that they don’t have class when the temperature goes below 50 degrees.  It was easy to forget that fact because I seem to remember the class being called on account of cold only once all last winter.  Besides, the day before, it was in the eighties.  Can you blame me for being confused?  You might ask whether it was really necessary for there to be an actual policy cancelling class in sub-50-degree weather for me to realize that submerging myself in water when the air temperature is 46 degrees is not a great idea.  You have a valid point.  Maybe I was just a bureaucrat for way too many years.  Or maybe I’ve just forgotten what “cold” is.

The temperature was all anyone was talking about on December 9th.  Everywhere I went, I heard people remarking on what they were doing when they realized the morning started with temperatures in the forties and that the day’s high temperature was about 25 degrees less than the day before.  I half expected to turn on the news and have the anchor announce, “It is not hot.  I repeat, it is NOT hot.  Film at eleven.” 

As the day progressed, however, the “not hot” front dissipated.  Fall sort of peeped its head out of summer, but retreated just as quickly.  The temperature rose and people discarded the sweaters that were seeing the light of day for the first time since last February.   Four days later, the temperatures approached 90 degrees once more. The “Fall” seemed to have been like those falls that world class figure skaters have when attempting difficult jumps- if there is a stumble towards the beginning, the skater has the opportunity to pick herself back up quickly and gracefully and resume the routine so that, by the time the program is over, the audience is wondering if there had ever truly been a fall at all.  At any rate, my sweatshirt is still hanging in my closet in pristine condition. 

How many degrees does it take to change the season?  Only a few, but the season has to really want to change.

Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it!  Does the weather seem wacky to you?  Have you had to adjust to a new climate when you’ve moved?  What has that been like for you?  Please share your perspective by leaving a comment.  In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a sunny day… both weather-wise and in every other way!

Terri 🙂

And the Rain, Rain, Rain Came Down, Down, Down

Summer in the American southeast!   The snowbirds have gone home and I don’t have to arrive at church half an hour early to get a seat.  I don’t have to plan on eating dinner at 4:00pm in order to avoid waiting in a restaurant for several hours. 

 On the other hand, the summer weather has hit.  The temperature and the humidity are the same number on an almost daily basis.  And that number starts with a “9.”  As Max says, we live in God’s hot tub.  You don’t so much breathe the air as drink it.  They say ladies don’t sweat.  Horses sweat.  Men perspire.  Ladies glow.  If that is so, I believe I glow brightly enough to be seen from space. 

 We eat dinner to the dulcet tones of the weather alarm radio, squawking dire warnings at us about the damage that can be done by winds over 50 miles per hour.  I wondered if there would be lightning bugs in this area.  I haven’t seen any lightning bugs, but I have certainly seen lightning.  In fact, the thunder and lightning regularly convince me that someone finally invented the Way-Back Machine and we’ve landed in World War I France. 

 As someone who grew up in a place where we barely knew what rain was, it is interesting to live in a place where rain- in fact an abundance of rain- is just the way things are.  No one seems to have an ark in the driveway, but it certainly feels like one will be necessary at any time.  The thing about this state is that it CAN rain any time and, sometimes, it does. 

 Now that the summer is here, those “sometimes” are much more frequent.  We have a thunderstorm or two in our general vicinity almost every day.  They last from five minutes to an hour or so.  The other day, I went out to get my nails done.  As I left the nail shop, I got caught in a cloudburst.  In the time it took me to get to the car, I was so soaked that the dye from my blue suede shoes had steeped into my feet.  Not only did this deluge ruin my shoes, I looked like a smurf from the ankles down for the next two days.  I remember the first time I was out when I actually felt unsafe driving because of the weather.  I would have pulled over, except I couldn’t see anything in any direction.  I felt it was only slightly less likely I would run into something directly ahead of me than that I would run into something if I moved to the side.  When it isn’t actually raining, I often think of the weather as “oozing.”  The air can’t hold all the moisture and dampness seems to be literally seeping from the atmosphere. 

 Where I came from, people called in absent from work at the first sign of a raindrop.  Here, people do arduous outdoor work, soaked in rain and sweat.  If they stopped for weather, nothing would ever get done.  When there is lightning, the workers cover what they are doing, sit in their vehicles for a while, and are back at it immediately as soon as the sky is quiet again.  Supermarkets keep a supply of loaner umbrellas so people won’t get wet if a shower starts while they are in the store.  I believe the region’s economy would come to a standstill if rain stopped anyone from buying groceries at any time.

 When it rains, people don disposable ponchos and continue whatever recreational activity they are doing.  They consider it an imposition to get out of the pool or off a lake, despite the desperate warnings of that weather alarm radio screeching about lightning strikes.  Here are some famous potentially last words I heard at the pool earlier this week- “That isn’t really thunder.  It isn’t loud enough.”  I was listening to the news one day and the weather guy cautioned that there was going to be thunderstorms on the Fourth of July.  He went on to inform us that the rain might be over by fireworks time, so people should go ahead with their plans and just bring an umbrella.  Great…. A bunch of people sitting in a central Florida storm holding their own personal lightning rods. Fireworks might not be the only thing lighting up those displays.

 We are in “hurricane season” (not the most comforting of monikers, admittedly).  We live pretty far from any coast, so actual hurricanes are rather rare in our community.  However, whether you call it a hurricane, tropical storm, thunder warning, or just precipitation, it is more rain than I’ve seen in forever. 

 I have to admit the thunder is a bit unnerving.  It can actually rattle our very solid little house, even without a hurricane.  I remember parents telling frightened children that the thunder and lightning were “just the angels having a party up in heaven.” 

 I beg to differ.

 Those angels are pissed off. 

What do you think?  Is summer where you live a nightly light show?  Or do you have other impressions of the seasons?  Please share your perspective by leaving a comment.  In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.  Have a great day.  Stay dry!

Terri 🙂